Wednesday, December 23, 2015

To begin, a definition: “Triptychs”
are typically three-paneled paintings or a photograph series that explores a
unified theme in different ways.

The triptych of this
collection is three short stories: “Long Live the King,” “The Deposition,” and “Lunar
Seas.” Thematically, there could be several broad-based connections between the
three stories, as they each cover a range of human emotions and relationships.
Other reviewers have put forth their own theories. To me, the triptych here is
unified as Past, Present, and Future
explorations of what is most “savage” (read primitive, archetypal,
low-vibrational) in Humankind’s relationships to its dark secrets as they are
expressed in both our codified, societal Myths and the ones we individually
construct.

The
cover design, by Keri Knutson, creates
an initial unification of the stories by overlaying key elements from each on a
macabre human skull. The chosen symbols could be used as a start, if the reader
so chooses.

The first story, “Long Live
the King,” opens with a quote from James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, a large volume of comparative religion published
in 1890 that includes case studies on the world-wide phenomena of tribal kings
being ritually killed when they began to show signs of weakness, physically or
in the mind.The story is written
with a syntax that situates the reader firmly in the ancient world of ritual
and myth, which makes for a challenging read (almost like trying to read the
transcript of a dream-in-progress) but well worth the effort expended.

Frazer’s book also examined
rites of passage, which is another unifying element across this triptych.

My biggest takeaway from
“Long Live the King” is the idea that the kings of old were all too human in
their signing on, knowing the cost, and then resisting the contract to be
killed as the time drew near. It’s all too rare that this aspect of these
tribal conditions is explored; the only other instance that comes to mind is an
episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker,
from the mid-1970s, in an episode guest-starring Eric Estrada.

The second story, “The
Deposition,” is a fun read in the tradition of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, where Hell is
situated as a bureaucratic nightmare where managers and case workers struggle
to win souls of humans that are just clever enough to sometimes win. Ball’s
story focuses on connection through the dream state, where various strategies
are employed to keep the Dreamer from realizing it is a dream, or waking up.
The story drips with the boredom and frustration of the average worker inherent
in so much British writing and music, from Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to The Police song “Synchronicity
II.”

The third story, set in the
Future, is a dystopian tale of an off-Earth colony where education,
relationships, and even one’s inclinations toward free thought are carefully
controlled by an oligarchy of corporate/government interests even more
intertwined than they are today. A little bit 1984, the film Equilibrium,
Ayn Rand’s Anthem, and Rush’s 2112 concept album, this story evoked
the clearest visual imagery for me. It is the stuff of which good film
adaptations are made. It has elements of romance, rebellion, and a terrible
aloneness made manifest in the main character. This is also the longest of the
three stories, taking up half the book.

As I have processed the
stories, and further thought about the idea of the triptych, I have come to
realize that the stories function like Russian nesting dolls, which accounts
for them getting larger as they progress, because the Future contains the Past
and the Present and the Present contains the Past, while the Past itself sits
alone and often disconnected, distanced from us through its archaic language
and rituals.

Which is, of course, not the
case at all, as this collection shows.

In Savages, Ball has accomplished a great deal in its forty or so
pages, not the least of which is showcasing his ability to write in a wide
range of voices, each particularly suited to the position of
Past/Present/Future and the needed tonal weight of the tale being told.

If you consider each story carefully
on its own, and then together as the triptych, you will find that, in all of
the desperate darkness in which the characters of the stories reside, there is
a speck of light, which, when followed deeply enough,becomes Hope.

Friday, December 18, 2015

As Founding Editor of www.newmystics.com,
which hosts pages for seventy authors and artists from around the world, I have
the opportunity to give the creators of innovative and thought-provoking poetry
a forum for their work.

In cultivating the e-publisher/author relationship, I am sometimes
asked to review additional work by an author. In the case of Jack Galmitz, in
2014 I reviewed three of his chapbooks—Objects,
Yellow Light, and A Semblance. During the course of our
correspondence, Galmitz wrote that his poetry is based on “the indeterminacy
created by ambiguity—sometimes two words that are joined together when left
alone on the page makes one realize there are many ways to take them and this
leaves doubt and makes one look and be aware of what is there and this is the
purpose I think of art.”

This philosophy brings to mind some of my current favorites
in the poetry world—Heller Levinson and Eileen Tabios. They share Galmitz’s
ability to create works that require the reader in relationship for them to
reach full bloom. One cannot read their poems, nor review them, in a
traditional way.

This is especially true after reading Galmitz’s recent
chapbook, non-zero-sum, which
consists of a few dozen poems, all three lines each, in a 33-page pdf, a total that includes three blank pages at the
end. The book can be “read” in 15 minutes or less—or you can spend hours with
it, over time, mining the riches that the brevity and imagery provide. This is
what I suggest. Making an interpretation of the title and the blank pages, one
might say that non-zero-sum indicates
a crucial dependence on outside factors, such as the contributions made by the
reader to the process.

Following on from this interpretation, I have chosen half a
dozen of the poems to reprint here. After each, I share what I took from them
in the way of interpretation and, more importantly, personal inspiration. Like
a Buddhist koan or a sutra—or our dreams—what we take from them is unique to the
individual experiencing them.

“The room full

of cardboard
boxes

empty”

I take this
as the collection itself, the room being the book. The poems are the cardboard
boxes, left empty to be filled with what the reader chooses to put in them.

“While
they're in the air

listen to
the leaves falling

there”

Of all of
the pieces in this collection, this one operates most like a Buddhist koan or a
sutra, similar to, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” There is no right
or wrong answer—simply engage your senses on the imagery of the leaves… how do
they look? How do they sound? You could spend a great deal of time with just this
poem.

“A mushroom
cloud

rising in
the distance

iphones
steady”

A commentary
on the ubiquity of cameras in modern life, this poem, to me, also signifies that
getting the “shot”—be it still or video—for your Instagram, Facebook, Vine, or
Snapchat—is the motivating factor of the moment, not the larger
historical/sociopolitical implications of what you are witnessing. The word
“steady” is key to me. A major nuclear event happens right in front of modern Techno sapien, and our subject remains
unpanicked. As I share in my interactive bullying education and prevention
workshops, so much of what our teenagers see is through the frame of a
computer, ipad, or phone… and that makes everything look like TV and film,
which leads to a dangerous disengagement.

“A glass
vase

holds a
warped table

& a
white rose”

I chose this
poem for a few reasons, the first being that it requires the reader to place
trust in the craftsmanship and specificity of the poet. Each word was chosen
with intent, just as each seemingly random drip and splatter of a Jackson
Pollock painting is intentional, or made to be so through further intention.

What is the
visual image of a vase holding a table?
A warped table, at that? What might
it mean? The limitations of physics take us from the literal into the
metaphorical. The symbolism of the white rose adds an additional dimension.
This three-line, 10-words-and-an-ampersand poem holds limitless possibilities
for contemplation, a story prompt, or the raw material for a visual expression
through a painting or picture.

“Every
Sunday

at the sea

there’s a
sermon”

Having grown
up at the Jersey shore and lived near the ocean in Maine and also currently in
North Carolina, I have known many fishermen and have read more than my share of
Conrad, Melville, and Hemingway, so this poem speaks to me of the sea and the
hard, dangerous life of those that ply their trade on its treacherous waters,
and the role of Faith, Belief, and Prayer in the lore of their lives. And I
have also seen enough sunsets and storms upon the water to know that the sea
itselfprovides its own
transcending sermon in the prayer of water and wind.

“At the
rectory

under the
bare bulb

two men
shooting up”

This one
resonates like a scene from film noir. It contains point/counterpoint, and
could almost be considered what is now called “flash fiction,” an example of
which is Hemingway’s “For sale, baby’s shoes, never worn.”

Galmitz’s poetry
is provocative through its efficiency, reminding us all of the power of words.
In an age of 140-character “tweets” he reminds us that a small number of words
need not be mundane nor meaningless.

Monday, December 14, 2015

I still remember the day, seven
years ago, returning to my secluded three acres in West Virginia from a meeting
with my theatre company in New Jersey, to find a package from Larson
Publications. Inside was a note, and a copy of Jon Lipsky’s Dreaming Together: Explore Your Dreams by
Acting Them Out, which I promptly read and reviewed. It has never remained
on the shelf for any appreciable length of time. I go to it time and time again.

Jon Lipsky passed away some
months later, before we could talk. It was not until many years later, in
speaking with the publisher, that I found out that Professor Lipsky had
specifically requested that I receive a copy of his book for review.

Perhaps it was the name of my
theatre company at the time, New Mystics, or my work with a few theatre
companies that used dreams to create plays, that led to my name being placed on
the potential reviewers list. Like dreams themselves, how it came to be will, in
some aspects, forever remain a mystery.

It was half a year ago that I
received word that Jon’s son was co-editing a two-volume collection of his
father’s plays. I promptly contacted him, including a copy of my review of Dreaming Together and waited in
anticipation for the collection to be released.

This review covers Volume One.
I Intend to read and review Volume Two this Winter.

It is clear that the editors
have assembled this collection as both a labor of love and with a clear mission
to promote Jon Lipsky’s work outside of the relatively small world in which he
lived and created for most of his life—Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. Through
the Preface and Acknowledgments, the Biography section, and the introductions
that preface each of the four plays in the first volume, one can learn a great
deal about Professor Lipsky’s life, training, his highly collaborative way of
creating theatre, and why he wrote the plays he did. This is essential reading
to fully appreciate all that went into these works. Each play is also prefaced
by a production history.

The first play in the
collection, Living in Exile: A Retelling
of the Iliad (1981, revised 2011), includes an Author’s Preface, wherein
Lipsky tells us that the “purpose [of this adaptation] is not to modernize
Homer’s text, but to tell a war story.” Lipsky succeeds so well that every
young man or woman thinking of enlisting in the Armed Forces should be required
to experience this play right before sitting down with the recruiter. In
several of my own books and plays I present the truths of war that lay beyond
the myths of pageantry and stories of heroism that invite the unaware through
the prism of Spectacle into a world of all too much Reality. Living in Exile denies Spectacle, and does
so in a presentational way that calls to mind the tenets of Brecht, although
without so much Alienation effect.

In fact, Living in Exile was designed to be performed intimately, in living
rooms. The cast, like the other plays in this volume, play numerous parts and
use props, costumes, sound, and music to produce a great deal of theatricality
by marrying these familiar devices with the artistry of voice, tableau, and the
powerful words of the playwright.

War is war. This becomes
shockingly clear if one were to overlay the change in mindset of the soldiers
from the Iliad to, say, the Vietnam
War, or the very war in the Middle East that the world grapples with today
(indeed, the play being written in 1981 and revised 10 years after the events
of September 11, 2001, indicates that this is precisely Lipsky’s process). As
the narrator tells us, by the eighth year of the war, “Fragging became a rite
of passage. Self-mutilation became a source of glory. Suicide, though despised,
was commonplace.”

Are you aware of The 22
Project? It is named for the fact that 22 American veterans commit suicide every day. I recently helped with an
event they co-hosted, in conjunction with the VFW at which my father is Senior
Vice Commander. Reading Living in Exile
was often hard for me after that experience and I cannot help but think that
productions of the play in conjunction with such events would open a dialogue too
many Americans are unwilling to have.

Lipsky navigates honoring the
classic with inserting the modern with a considerable amount of skill. He uses
the universal ageless gem of sex to his advantage, and when he drops in a word
like “dude” it does not feel out of place. He also dances rhythmically,
flawlessly, between the macro of War and the micro of the deep personal wounds
and self-reflections of those who wage it. History often sacrifices the second
for the first, making plays like this essential.

In the end, it is the micro
that prevails. The narrator reminds us that “This is the way the Iliad ends.
Begun in anger, completed in compassion,” referring to Achilles giving King Priam
the time he needs to properly bury his son Hector.

In the midst of the devastating
terror attacks in France and in San Bernardino, CA and the mounting hatred of
Muslims, regardless of their individual beliefs, I wonder if any such
compassion will be at play when this long war finally ends.

The next play in the collection
is called Walking the Volcano: A Short
Play Progression (1991–2009). From the note on the script: “The eight
‘inventions’ … are variations on a theme. … we are looking in on a kind of
relationship endemic to the generation that came of age in the sixties … from
the moment of falling in love to the last goodbye” (p. 124). In an age where
10-minute plays are all the rage, Walking
the Volcano serves as both a starter piece for theatre companies wanting to
explore this aspect of theatre and a model for more deeply linking 10-minute
pieces in more innovative ways than the broadly thematic one typically seen.
The pieces that make up Walking the
Volcano are edgy and hard-hitting—perfect for classroom use for advanced
actors and directors.

My favorite play in the
collection is Beginner’s Luck: A play
based on the story of King Saul in the Bible (1977). As indicated by the
title of this review, Lipsky had the ability to take the classical stories of
antiquity and bring them to contemporary audiences with the lava of their core
themes bubbling with intensity. Although not staged specifically for a living
room, intimacy is as key here as in Living
in Exile; the Act One opening notes suggest: “The audience should feel that
a group of people have sat down with them on a hill to tell them a story.” Here
we have the fundamental origins, purpose, and power of theatre, divorced from
the spectacle that Peter Brook called the Deadly Theatre, which has all but
destroyed the modern mainstream theatre experience. Beginner’s Luck uses its poetics and music to full effect, taking
this biblical story of Saul, Samuel, Ruth, and David and situating it in the clanking
machine of political intrigue and ever-shifting alliances. Beginner’s Luck at times has a Pippin-esque feel, with witty
exchanges and an underlying current of the power–sexuality dyad. It is a play
that requires actors who have trained their bodies, voices, and storytelling ability
with equal dedication, for they truly are the fuel that makes this articulate,
high-energy engine go.

The last play in the collection
is Maggie’s Riff: A bebop turn on Jack
Kerouac’s true life hometown teenage romance Maggie Cassidy (1994). Those
who love the nexus of fact and legend that is Kerouac and his Beat comrades
will enjoy Lipsky’s take on this dreamlike space. Bringing to mind other
interpretative pieces that operate between myth and biography, such as Oliver
Stone’s film The Doors, Maggie’s Riff gives us layers of
interpretation: Kerouac’s, the playwright’s, and, ultimately, the
reader/watcher’s. Benefiting from Lipsky’s masterful incorporation of sound and
music, and the assigning of multiple roles to a single actor, Maggie’s Riff shows the heartache and
darkness behind the sexy legends of the Duluoz/Lowell and big city years that
all fans of this group of tortured geniuses ultimately arrive at sometime after
their initial all-out love of drunken anarchy in On the Road.

The Plays of Jon Lipsky, Volume One is a master’s class in not only
playwriting, but of making the classic contemporary and working with actors and
directors and audiences to bring storytelling back to its central place in
human communication and community. I look forward to reading and reviewing
Volume Two.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

As I have made the journey from reader, to writer, to
student, to professional writer, to teacher of workshops and writing classes, and
then to book reviewer, I have come to believe that there are three kinds of
(proficient, “talented”) writers at work in the world.

First, there are the Storytellers. People like Hemingway,
that come from the gut, who go fearlessly into the vortexing dream-space of
human experience to capture something in the net of their creating, who can
spin a captivating yarn without too much verbal or plot complexity but plenty
of power and resonance. Then there are the Technicians—those who inherently and
through 10,000 hours of practice, understand and apply structure, word choice,
syntax, and suspense… who “do the task of writing” at a high level.

The third type of writer is the one who is smart enough,
dedicated enough, and capable enough to know that, despite the fact that
Storytellers and Technicians can both sell a lot of books and equally move an
audience—that the true Golden Ring of what we do as writers is to meet at the
stormy nexus of BOTH of these strengths.

These, to me, are the writers worth reading. The writers
who, when they produce something new, lead us to drop everything, get a firm
hold of their book or e-file, and carve out ample time to dive deeply beneath
the waters of their words for as long as the capacity of our mental lungs to
hold our breath allows.

Smoky Zeidel, over the past four years, has become one of
these writers for me.

I was able to take a little more time than usual in the
opening of this review because I cannot tell you much about the story told in The Cabin. Or, more accurately, I choose
not to. Because almost anything I would tell beyond the broad strokes in the
next paragraph would ruin your experience. Muddy the waters into which you have
to dive. And it’s harder to hold your breath with the silt of story give-aways
floating about.

I can tell you that The
Cabin’s characters are primarily a family who has lived in the same
geographical area—the Allegheny Mountains of (West) Virginia for many
generations—who have seen the best and worst of humankind through the American
Civil War, slavery, and the changes that came with the new century. I can tell
you that the story involves fairy stones, and the Power of Belief to defy all
temporal–spatial barriers. And I can tell you that it involves, as my title
gives away, Time Travel.

What I should have named the review is “Time Travel Made (to
Look) Easy,” although that does not exactly roll off the tongue, which would be
a particular disservice to Zeidel, because she truly is a Technician: her
sentences move like the rivers and winds she often writes about in her poetry
and prose. And I say that it is Made (to Look) Easy because, true to her
strengths as a Technician, the complex plot, moving as it does between time and
space, never carries the thornier burdens of that trope, as it often does with
the stories told by, for instance, J. J. Abrams or James Cameron (each of whom
are masterful Storyteller-Technicians). I think that is because, in The Cabin, it is not science fiction; it
not a clever device employed for jazzy storytelling. It is an inherent, crucial
part of the tale Zeidel tells, and, like the audience who brings Tinkerbell
back to life in stagings of Peter Pan through
the Power of Belief, we as readers
must contribute to making the magic happen. Yes, of course, it ends how it
ends, but how much we invest is up to us.

I invested deeply, which speaks to Zeidel’s ability as a
Storyteller. She blends her thorough, far-ranging research (once again, the
Technician) with exquisitely drawn characters, a beautiful way of describing
geography, and a knack for bleeding things down to core emotional values that
puts her writing on a mythological level. I felt it in The Storyteller’s Bracelet, in her recent book of poetry, and here
in The Cabin. You cannot teach that.
It begins as a natural gift, coupled with tens of thousands of hours with pen
in hand or fingers on a keyboard.

In a world where jazzy tropes like CGI and gravity-defying
fights are the new standard for what passes as storytelling, books like The Cabin andwriters like Smoky Zeidel remind us that there is much, much more,
if only we know where to look.